Torn

Well, I'm torn. Super Tuesday is coming up in my state. My guy Fred is on the ballot but has dropped out of the race. I was having a rough time deciding among Giuliani, Romney, & McCain, as they all present different problems for me, philosophically.

I think I was actually trying to decide between Romney and Giuliani when Rudy dropped out. And then all the hoopla about McCain came up after Florida.

Can Romney beat Billary? This is an important question.

One of my biggest problems with McCain, though, is his apparent embrace of the AGW fraud. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I am an conservative and an environmentalist -- who also has a background in Meteorology (which includes a lot of physics). I've been trained in scientific method. And I know that the AGW critics would win the argument if the public forum (read: the press) would allow their argument to be made without a raft of disparaging disqualifiers. The facts are on their side. And I don't want someone going and signing some stupid treaty obliging us to meet some arbitrary goals that hurt our economy, won't make a discernible dent in CO2 emissions (even if they were causing a problem) and lay the groundwork for the ascendence of an Uber Global Government. It's nuts.

I'm all for low emissions, energy efficiency, energy independence, clean air, clean water, preserved open spaces, etc. But this AGW idea has gotten way out of hand.

If you've been reading along regularly, you know I have a lot of respect for Thomas Sowell. In his latest, he brings out a few things about McCain I have been unaware of and I find disturbing. From my experience reading him, Mr. Sowell is not prone to going off half cocked. So I'm inclined to take him seriously.

Via Morgan's blog the other day, I read an article that suggests Thompson supporters vote for Thompson anyway if he's on the ballot (and he is in my state) just to send a message to the RNC. I haven't completely discarded this idea. But I imagine a vote for Fred here is effectively going to be a vote for McCain in the final analysis. So I do need to take one more good, hard look at Romney, since he's the only other real viable choice.

Ahead of that, though, there is the prospect of a President Clinton II or a President Obama. And a chance to make that not happen with at least a president McCain who doesn't see the U.S. as the enemy in the war.

Not a pretty position to be in. I think this process is broken.

I think that every year there should be a "Super Tuesday" in each party where all 50 states vote on one day in the primaries. And intstead of "this is my choice", they should rank their candidates.

The one with the highest rank wins the nomination for that party. Or maybe the two with the highest ranks win and debate each other a little more and we follow up with another Super Tuesday to decide for sure. Or even #1 gets the Presidential nominaton and #2 gets the VP nomination.

Then we go to the polls. One of the things I hate most about this process is that the early states (and probably in at least equal part, the media) essentially thin out the candidates I get to chose from by the time it gets to my state. So the early states get pandered to individually instead of having national candidates having to appeal to everyone across the board at the same time. Then the press spins the results to have the meaning they think it should have -- whether it's just for a good story or because they want to, as most of them will say, "make a difference."

I don't know quite what I'm going to do yet. And I'm not used to being in this position. I don't like it at all.